Independent Thinking in a Red-Blue Town

Sometimes I complain that the media give us a distorted picture of the world by reporting bad news and ignoring the sea of good news, like the drop in heart disease deaths that I celebrated here. I understand why bad news is news and good news isn’t, but I do worry that we get a misleading picture of the world.

But then other times, perhaps contradictorily, I open the newspaper and see a story that seems so obvious that I almost wonder why it’s reported. Like this one in the Washington Post today:

Several projects subsidized by Maryland’s economic development agency are in financial trouble, legislative auditors reported yesterday, citing, in particular, a resort in Western Maryland and a golf course in Calvert County.

Rocky Gap Lodge & Golf Resort, the state-subsidized retreat built for $45 million a decade ago to revive an economically depressed area, has operated in the red for years and is $27 million in debt, the auditors said.

Chesapeake Hills, a golf course that the Maryland Economic Development Corp. took over from Calvert County five years ago, is running a $1.3 million deficit and cannot pay its operating costs without help from the county, the auditors said.

Whattaya know? Projects that weren’t financially viable without a subsidy from the taxpayers turn out to be . . . not financially viable, even with the subsidy. If there just wasn’t much market demand for a resort in an economically depressed area or a golf course in Calvert County, then it’s no surprise that the projects can’t even make their operating expenses. And of course, projects that are owned, managed, or subsidized by government tend not to be run as efficiently as projects in which individuals and businesses are risking their own money.

We’ve seen a bigger example of this recently in the subprime mortgage market, of course. People who borrowed money they really couldn’t afford discover that they can’t pay it back. That’s why it’s probably best to let the market work in deciding which mortgages, business start-ups, and other projects are financially sound.